Anarchy

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Polychromatic wings folded as a shadowcast figure gazed over a sleeping clan. The moons hung low in the sky, and the wind brushed over the figure with a low whisper, patting at her wings and teasing the tufts of her mane. Her singular antenna flicked impatiently above her clear, glassy jewel and she sat, curling her tail around her legs.

(Pretty one, lost one, don't you have a story to tell? Stay for awhile, stay for awhile? Never be lost again?)

She flicked off the insistent, soundless voice. Her sunken green eyes stared over the mock-mountain, the sprawling Light warren tiled with sporadic mosaics of rhodochrosite. A formerly Arcane lair, doubtless, and the ephemeral voice in her ear its sentinel spirit. What could have possessed them to leave?

She shook her head to clear it. It didn't matter. She had to keep moving. This was just another clan, just another--

"Hello."

The little skydancer jumped like a startled cat, and turned to find herself in the shadow of a towering, radiant imperial. Her scales reflected the dreamy shades of a starscape, and five glowing shadow-creatures fluttered around the chalcedony spikes protruding along her spine. But the imperial's pale amber eyes were kind.

"Are you lost?" (With us you would never be lost again, have your own future away from all the roles and rules, couldn't you stay, wouldn't you stay?)

She had always dreamed of being a progenitor, imbued with the drive and ambition, claw in claw with another just as determined as she, off to gouge a space for their clan out of the earth, or sky, or stars. What would it be like to have a sentinel spirit in her own ear, guiding and advising her and her own people to prosperity and peace?

Anarchy glared back at the imperial with bitterness, at first. How did it feel, to have a place? To not be a wanderer, deserter, unwanted and purposeless? But the imperial's aura remained calm and welcoming, and her anger fell away. None could lie to a skydancer, never truly. Even she could not lie to herself, and she could not brush off the future she saw reflected in those rose-framed eyes as empty hopes. The voice in her ear was no wayward spirit withered with age and disuse, but one young and uncertain, nebulous with dreams and ideas.

She broke her gaze from the imperial to look around. The land was hilly and dotted with ruins and small ponds, but that would change. Visions flashed before her eyes: the dawn breaking over a spiral twined around an old temple-turned-warren, a guardian dusting himself off as he stepped out from his den. A ridgeback casting a lure into that pond, right there, and a bogsneak yawning and watering a small fenced garden. Anarchy allowed herself to dream a bit more, and imagined her lost brother landing beside her, admiring every sunrise like he had as a hatchling. A haven for the lost, the unwanted. A home for those like her. The voice in her ear encouraged her, enthusiastically mapping out buildings, food stores, boundary lines. She turned back to the imperial with a flicker of hope.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Reverie," the imperial responded.

A toothy smile, a name prophetic. It settled in her mind that yes, she would become a matriarch rather than an infantry soldier in some deity's army, someday a leader of dragons rather than a commander of warriors. The imperial peered into Anarchy's green eyes, took in the lilt of a Gladeveins native.

"Aren't you a bit...far...from your lands?"

A back paw thumped with certainty against the Lightweaver's land. She sealed their future in nine words and a determined glance. Anarchy offered a weighty response for a platitude of a question, and the stray spirit—now a guardian spirit—trilled with joy to hear it.

"No. In fact, I think I've finally come home."

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